Olive to launch first Indian HSPA+ smartphone – do we smell Gingerbread?

We have received an invite from the folks at Olive Telecom, asking us to “witness the launch of the first Indian HSPA+  smartphone” in Delhi on February 9. First, let us get the jargon out of the way and clarify that HSPA+ is a wireless broadband standard with a potential of extremely fast upload and download speeds. But what really interests us is the reference to “smartphone,” and the fact that present at the event will be not only Ajay Khanna, Chairman, Olive Telecom, but also Qualcomm’s India and South Asia President Kanwalinder Singh, and Aircel’s COO Gurdeep Singh. All of which could (and we insist this is just speculation) indicate a smartphone powered by a Qualcomm processor and running on Aircel’s network.

Now, considering that the only operating system that Olive has used in a major product is Android – they used version 2.2 in the OlivePad tablet – it would not be that much of a leap of faith to believe that the product to be unveiled on Wednesday is an Android phone. And it could well be running on a Snapdragon processor. Now, that could mean Android 2.2, but we are sticking our necks out and hoping that this is in fact the Gingerbread (2.3) device that some social networks have been buzzing about being launched in India in February. Yes, all this is pure guesswork – but we have some reason (and hope) to believe that India might be getting its first Gingerbread phone come February 9th. Enough guesswork now – we will let you know the facts when we discover them!